New Times - San Luis Obispo - Winning Images 98

sponsored by:

The Annual New Times Photo Contest

Best of Show: Emily Marie Robinson, "Blue Mist"

Passion for the Art Is Evident in This Year’s Honorees

BY DOUG ALLEN

When you set out to judge a photo contest, as I and two other local photographers did last week, you have to realize up front that not everyone is going to agree with you on every award. Not the public, not the other judges, certainly not the nonwinning entrants.

This is especially true in a contest where the overall standard is so high. Still, it’s nice to come to some sort of consensus. For Winning Images ’98, the third annual New Times Photo Contest, we judges spent six hours poring over the 278 entries before coming to our decisions.

The judges were:

• Forrest Doud, a San Luis Obispo-based commercial photographer with 15 years of local experience. He specializes in commercial product photography, photography for fine artists, and aerial photography from helicopters. Doud has won awards in our previous two contests.

• Peggy Mesler, owner of the Photo Shop, a camera store and photo gallery in San Luis Obispo. She is a lifelong San Luis Obispo resident and a Cal Poly photojournalism graduate.

• For myself, I am the New Times staff photographer and a Cal Poly Art and Design Department, photo option, alumnus who has been living and photographing in the area for 10 years.

We were all duly impressed with the overall quality of the entries, as well as the wide range of subject matter and techniques used.

Photographers had only a few rules to follow. They had to submit photos taken in SLO County and they had to fit in categories of faces, places, or open.

Best of Show honors this year went to Emily Marie Robinson’s "Blue Myst." We are so inundated every year with photos of Morro Rock that I, for one, never thought a Rock shot could win the grand prize. But during the judging this subtle, haunting photo rose to the top of a very competitive field.

Robinson’s interpretation of driftwood on the beach evoked a mood similar to gum bichromate prints from the pictorialist era of the 1900s.

The thing that stood out for the judges for all of the winning entries was their passion.

Passion is probably the most important element in a successful photograph, and it is usually the deciding factor when judging contests such as this one. Photographers, particularly amateurs, usually photograph what they feel an emotional bond with, such as their children, pets, or a significant landscape. Most professionals tend to stress over the details, concentrating on technique, posing, etc., rather than emotional quality. But the winning ones always show a connection with a subject

The photographs that you see here show passion. Passion for the subject, passion for the quality of light, passion for photography in general. How else do you explain why somebody attached a camera to a kite to do aerial photographs (see first place in professional, color, places)? I shudder to think of how much trial and error and practice went into that.

Robinson won $300 and a plaque for her effort. With the help of co-sponsor First Bank, all the prizes for this year’s competition are cash, with first-place winners receiving $100, second-place finishers getting $40, and third place $20. All of them, plus those who were chosen as honorable mention, will also receive certificates.

Over the next 16 pages, you’ll see all of the winners. They’re also available for viewing on the Web at www.newtimes-slo.com. And starting with an awards ceremony at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, the winning entries will be on display for a week at the San Luis Obispo Art Center in Mission Plaza.

Doug Allen, New Times' very own staff photographer, agrees with Gregory Heisler, a well-known New York photographer, who states: "You take better photographs when you are taking photographs than when you are not."